Carload of Whatever is not a radio show right now. It has changed into living room, beer and used/inherited record hang outs. Toronto's community radio stations have wait lists for volunteers and strange infighting. Maybe Andrea and I will start something else here.

Tonight! (Wednesday, July 15) - Colourbook, 'It It, Almonds, Cohen at Bayanihan Community Centre. Come watch Brock play in every band before he moves to Toronto! This will be the last Almonds show in Victoria for a while, and the last 'It It show forever. Also, come see Colourbook's newly spray painted van - SHITTY STEVE!

This weekend is the annual What the Heck Fest happening on the other side of the San Juan Islands in Anacortes, Washington. I think I will finally make it over there this year. More info and lineup is here. It costs the same to walk onto the ferry as it does to bring your bike. See you there!

After three years on the air, this Sunday will be the last Carload of Whatever. Thanks to anyone who ever tuned in, called in, read this poorly maintained blog, or came out to any of the A&R all ages shows. It was all pretty cool!

Old Lifer Cody Spencer was here last Sunday to talk about the brand new Old Life Compilation. We worked our way through the songs on the new comp, and shared relatively interesting information about each band/artist along the way.

This Sunday be sure to tune into both Gumdrops & Lollipops and Carload of Whatever to hear TWO live in studio performances. G&L will be hosting a live set from My Friend Wallis, a new local tropical band made up of most of Vincat and some of their friends. Carload of Whatever will host an acoustic set from Almonds, Cohen.

My Friend Wallis will be releasing their debut record on Saturday night at the new 16 1/2 space in Fan Tan alley. Also performing that night will be Himalayan Bear and 'It It.

Almonds, Cohen will be playing live on Sunday night at Bayanihan Community Centre along with Iji, Watercolor Paintings and Ruthie & Winfield.

Also:Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP - Disappearing InkSunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer - You Go On AheadArchivist - Learning To Live on Poison - JagwaggerRoyal City - Royal City - Is This It?Royal City - Royal City - Bad Luck

Music Waste is an independent music festival that takes place every June in Vancouver. It began 15 years ago as a protest against corporately sponsored, industry oriented, 'pay-to-apply' festivals, and has since grown into the most interesting music event in the city. Music Waste is locally oriented, with the great majority of bands playing being from Vancouver. This year over 100 bands will play at 25 shows throughout East Vancouver. Passes are only $15! If you find yourself in Vancouver in the next week/weekend, go hang out and get a crash course in all things Vancouver. Lucky for me, I'll be killing the rest of this week in Vancouver. Hopefully I can bring back some new music for the show.

The new Think About Life album is totally crazy. Holy smokes. Andrea described it well saying that it feels like falling into a giant pool of lemonade. It is the silliest, cheesiest, most fun summertime album I could image. Let's hope they can finally make it out to Victoria sometime soon so we can have fun like this:

I played Operation Ivy today. "I know that things are getting tougher when you cant get top off from the bottom of the barrel. Wide open road of my future now...Its looking fucking narrow!" Woah man!

I also played a Jay Reatard song, mostly so that I could talk about him punching people. Last summer in Toronto, Jay Reatard got really mad when a drunk dude jumped up on stage, so he punched him in the face and stormed off. Luckily, this was all documented...

The venue the show was at - The Silver Dollar - is home to the somewhat infamous, sporadic, drug addicted booker Dan Burke. After Jay Reatard and co. left the stage, Dan jumped up and taunted the band and the audience, making the whole show into a pretty good punk viral video...

After this all happened, Jay Reatard began to attack Dan Burke and the Silver Dollar in interviews, saying lack of security, etc was the reason for the incident. This image shows just how threatening Jay Reatard's attacker was...Perhaps the only winner from the night was David Waldman (aka Kid With a Camera) who managed to capture the amazing photo above.

The Youtube user citizenbirdtube was obviously enraged by the incident:

"Real punks don't give a shit if a fan dances or spoofs a bit on stage as long as there is no threat to the band. That's what real punk and hardcore is all about - the close connection to the people.

The new Almonds, Cohen CD is out! It is called Amazing Grass. Brock spent a full year chipping away at recording these songs with Macadamia Brother Scott, leaving us all with a fantastic record that combines beautiful arrangements with really accomplished songwriting. Lots of people are very excited! You can find Amazing Grass at Ditch Records, or through the Old Life Records mail order.

Almonds, Cohen played in a tunnel on the Galloping Goose on a rainy Wednesday to celebrate the release of the record. It sort of looked like this:

I was away in Vancouver and America for a bit. Thanks to Johanna and Nathan for filling in for me the past few weeks.

While I was away the Victoria city council decided to stop Camas and the Brickyard from hosting shows. Andrea already articulated how I feel about this, but I wanted to mention it on here as well. All ages venues are important to local music scenes; they allow for the entire community to participate in shows, regardless of age. I spent a large part of my underage high school years at all ages shows. I always dreaded seeing my favorite bands come through town with the '19+' tag attached to the listing.

Camas made it easy for anyone to put on shows. Andrea and I used to complain about the lack of affordable all ages venues in Victoria. Camas stopped our complaining for a year and a half. The space supported several music communities in Victoria for that period, hosting local punk, hardcore, noise and indie rock shows on a weekly basis. As of this Friday, May 15, Camas will no longer be having shows. Luckily, the Fifty Fifty Arts Collective stepped back into the picture right before we lost Camas and the Brickyard as venues. Vancouver has been having similar issues with all ages venues being shut down recently. It is a problem that will recur, and Victoria is not the only place this happens. Technically, these venues were illegal, operating outside of their zoning designations. I'm not sure what needs to happen to ensure that a venue can operate 'legally,' but at least we had those spaces for the time that we did.

In happier local music news, the Almonds, Cohen full length record is DONE! It is called Amazing Grass, and there is a special release show happening on Wednesday. Almonds, Cohen doesn't even need venues. This event is outside, in a semi-secret (okay, it's a tunnel) location. Meet at Recyclistas at 8:30. Bring a flashlight. It's outside. It's free. Macadamia Brother's are performing as well. Boom box amps.

I've been terrible at updating this blog for the past month and a half. Finishing up school consumed my spare time. When my updates disappear you should go read Regency Fops. Geoff posts playlists before the show goes to air. That would be impossible on Carload of Whatever.

Things I think about: Why did Julie Doiron re-record songs she wrote for Shotgun & Jaybird in 2006? Why did she decide to do it on this record, and not on the other two records she's put out since Trying to Get Somewhere? This stuff keeps me up at night.

Carload of Whatever is heading into its last summer. I should have lots of free time over the next few months, so hopefully that translates into well organized, informative programming. That being said, I'll be gone for the next two weeks. This week Johanna is filling in for me, followed by Nathan next Sunday. See you after that.

Once a year CFUV gets really annoying and asks for money. The money we raise during the week of FUNDRIVE fully supports the station for the entire year. As a volunteer programmer, I am required to raise over $200 for CFUV through my show. So here I am, asking you to help out CFUV for another year and donate some money to my show tomorrow. Any donations of $25 or more are eligble either for one trip into our 'Small Room of Big Prizes' (each trip allows you to take one CD, LP, etc as a gift from the room) or a tax receipt. My past visits to the 'small room' have rewarded me with a Sonic Youth rarities collection, a Hank record, a Ninja High School CD and a fancy CFUV t-shirt. You want to be in there.

dd/mm/yyyy were on MTV! It was strange to see them sandwiched between commentary on The Hills, however it was also very cool that a band like dd/mm/yyyy could find themselves performing on national television (MTV Canada that is). Their new record Black Square just might be the most 'normal' thing this band has ever released. The songs generally follow pretty basic ideas of song structure, with relatively consistent tempos and time signatures. The jagged schizophrenia of the band is still there, however it just seems a little more palatable this time around. The best thing about this record is that they stripped it down to 35 minutes and just 12 tracks, as opposed to Are They Masks? and The Blue Screen of Death, both of which have 20+ tracks and come close to the hour mark. The band are in the middle of another massive tour right now, a mode they seem to constantly be in. They are certainly one of the harder working bands in Toronto in their consistent break out of the Southern Ontario bubble. I've tried to bring them here a few times, but schedules never lined up. Hopefully someone can make that happen in the near future. Thumbs up for the new record!

When I first heard about Charles Spearin's record The Happiness Project I just sort of ignored it. I assumed it would be in the same vein as the two recent 'Broken Social Scene Presents' records. While Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning's records in the BSS Presents series were good, I think they lost the power of the sprawling collective by not utilizing the diverse songwriting amongst them. I was concerned that a Charles Spearin record would continue the trend of Broken Social Scene acting as a backing band, signaling a slow move away from what made records like You Forgot It In People so good. I was pleasantly surprised to find The Happiness Project to be something completely new.

Rather than acting as another solo record from a member of Broken Social Scene, The Happiness Project rejects the concept of conventional songwriting, instead using the intonation of conversation to map out melodies. In essence the songs on the record are written by the cadence of individual conversations about happiness. The result is a complex and beautiful record that successfully draws attention to the artistic value of daily life and conversation. Perhaps a little trying at times, the record on the whole is dense while being surprisingly listenable. The track Mr. Gowrie seems to fully realize the power of this strange songwriting mode. The record employs the musical talents of quite a few Broken Social Scene members and is being released on Kevin Drew's Arts and Crafts Records, but don't be mislead...this is not a Broken Social Scene release. This is weird. In a good way.

The record comes on on Tuesday, February 10th. You stream some tracks and find more info here.

Quite a few new releases into the station this week, including the new A.C. Newman record. I really liked the first song of his that I played. Andrea described it as "orchestral." I do too. I haven't listened to the whole record yet though, so I can't comment on the whole thing. I have a question for you though...his myspace page says 'Brooklyn, New York' as his location. Did Carl abandon his Vancouver roots for the mecca of hip?

The new Animal Collective really is good, but of course you already know that. I take issue with the last song, but apart from that, it is a pretty easy record to like. They are playing in Vancouver on May 24 at the Commodore. No word on who with yet, but I imagine that show will sell out very quick, if it hasn't already. Lets see how long this one stays on the CFUV charts.